CAMELOT ISLAND — Four years of government work went up in smoke on this rocky isle in the Thousand Islands archipelago this week.

Big smiles and congratulations filled the air afterward.

A sooty Parks Canada fire crew then packed up its fire-breathing drip torches and boated off into a blazing sunset.

The 16 workers purposely charred a hectare of this rugged, uninhabited St. Lawrence River island to save a stand of scraggly but rare trees called Pitch Pine.

It’s a counterintuitive species — wood that needs flames to regenerate and survive.

Pitch Pine seeds, in turn, provide food for birds and other wildlife.

It’s part of what makes the Thousand Islands National Park one of Canada’s natural wonders, as spectacular as Banff, Jasper and Gros Morne, just flatter and wetter.

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Bruce MacMillan, external relations for Parks Canada briefs reporters on a boat just off the shore of Camelot Island where workers set fire to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Parks Canada workers set fire to a portion of Camelot Island in the Thousands Islands in Mallorytown, ON, Tuesday July 22, 2014. The fire is intended to protect the pitch pine, a rare, fire-dependant tree species unique to the area.

Four years of government work went up in smoke on this rocky isle in the Thousand Islands archipelago this week.

“We have responsibility to keep the species here,” says Josh Van Wieren, the park’s ecologist.

“One of the main reasons they’re in trouble here is the (policy of) fire suppression over the last century. So there’s the moral or ethical consideration.”

Deep beneath the landscape, a 50-kilometre wide geological zone of ancient granite called the Frontenac Arch joins the Canadian Precambrian shield to the Adirondack Mountains. (The park’s 26 islands, scattered between Kingston and Brockville, were once mountain tops, too.)

As the backbone of eastern North America, it has been and remains an important biological corridor. UNESCO designated the area as a biosphere reserve in 2002.

Migrating animals have used the Thousand Islands — actually more like 1,865 — as stepping stones across the St. Lawrence River Valley for eons. Today, most human wildlife just hops on nearby Highway 401.

This was the first national park east of the Rockies, created eight years before the headquarters of what is now Parks Canada opened in the Birks Building at 107 Sparks St.

The park service has grappled with fire’s Jekyll-and-Hyde temperament ever since.

Fire is an essential part of nature, but has been suppressed here for the past century to protect people and property.

As the unimpeded forest advances and thickens, Camelot’s 50 to 75 mature Pitch Pines are left in the dark. They not only struggle to absorb sunlight through the canopy but have to compete in with a jungle of white and red pine, eastern hemlock, black and pin cherry, red and white cedar and red and white oak, among others.

The ground, meanwhile, is covered with heavy duff, blocking the trees’ seeds from reaching the soil minerals they need to germinate and grow into saplings.

No saplings means no more Pitch Pine. And that would be a crime. This is one of only two places in Canada that Pitch Pine grows. (The other is southern Quebec. It’s common in the United States.)

The object of Tuesday’s prescribed burn was not to burn down Camelot, but just roast it enough to give the Pitch Pines room to thrive in the woods. Parks Canada has been planning the burn, on and off, for four years. Three others have been staged on other islands in recent years and Van Wieren says the early evidence shows the Pitch Pine (as well as Red Oak), “really does a lot better when there’s fire; we’re not getting regeneration without it.”

Still, the park’s inventory of Pitch Pine, which number in the thousands, has shrunk by more than 50 per cent since the 1970s.

The 10.3-hectare Camelot Island is about 12 kilometres upriver from Ivy Lea, with a handful of campsites, sheltered bays and a popular spot for paddlers. As part of the Lake Fleet Group, it is named after a British gunboat that patrolled these waters for enemy Americans during the War of 1812.

The resulting hot, dirty-white smoke stirs a steady trickle of cottagers to boat over from their islands.

Again and again, section by section, the fire crews ignited more flames and marched the fire down the island’s western shoreline and into a light southwesterly wind.

The wind acts as a safety feature, preventing advancing flames from racing uncontrollably ahead. The technique, called back burning, is designed so the small sections of flame burn backward with the wind to the previously burned section where there’s no fuel left.

Meanwhile, a few dozen metres to the east, a man-made fire break created Monday prevents the flames from spreading outside the 1.06-hectare prescribed fire zone.

By 5 p.m., it’s all over. The only sign of life is a teeny, glossy brown mink paddling swiftly away, making for cool ground.

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